I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. The concept is lost on me. If you've resolved to change something, why wait till New Years? Wouldn't you want to start resolving immediately? I dunno.

I do believe in setting goals though, and I do have a small list of things I'd like to accomplish before 2009. (Yikes, just saying that makes me feel old. Or futuristic. One of those.)

• I'm going to submit to a few contests, and my first deadline is January 15th. It's a big contest. I'm readying my slides and application info now. Yes, I totally should have done this earlier.

• I'm also going to submit my materials to some galleries and museums. I haven't completed a full list yet, but a huge gallery in Orange County (California) and a huge one in New York are already on it. (Plus a few not-so-big ones in and around Los Angeles.) This is a long term goal. It can take well over a year to complete the submission process.

• I would also like to host some sort of art event. To show my art. I have some new pieces that I really want people to see in person. My art cannot translate properly online. There is so much more that can only be understood when you look at it in person. Like, for example, how thick the texture is, and how light bounces and reflects off the painting when you stand near it. Also, UV light is terrible in pictures, and photos never show how intense the colors can get, and how the canvas seems to glow from within when you shine a blacklight on it. So... I need people to look at it.(These, along with the never ending stream of little ones that I constantly obsess over and vow to follow through with, of course.)

The truth is, I have lots of big plans for 2008. Some are personal, some are boring, and most are only important to me. There are certain ones that I like to say out loud though, as that creates a sort of internal commitment to accomplish them, factoring in my typical lag time. (I said before 2009, right?)

Do not click the image in my blog, but go directly to APOD to see the full sized image. You're supposed to scroll from left to right to view it. Imagine you're lying on that beach looking up at that sky.

I am so awestruck. I get so many painting ideas from astronomy pictures. Obviously.

Even better, I checked out the photographer's own website and my mind has been broken. Wow. This guy is brilliant. He is writing a book about his sky pictures. Wow.

I always love our tree. I love the idea of having a tree. A tree! In your house! Rather than cutting a tree down, we always get a potted one and attempt to keep it alive afterwards for the next year until it inevitably dies in the spring because we forget to water it during some freak March heat wave.

I did actually blast the central heat to like 85 yesterday and strip down to my summer clothes with an ice cold glass of water, but ultimately that seemed sort of silly for December 20th, so.

Enter my good friend Dan, whom most of us now consider a type of caped crusader anyway, but that's because he patrols the streets all day in his caped crusader costume and keeps local neighborhoods from falling peril to overgrown shrubs, vicious overgrown dogs, and bad meter reading.

After explaining my situation to him and discussing possible solutions, he made some phone calls, jumped into his Danmobile, sped off to Ace Hardware, and then drove an extra 20 minutes out to me to hand deliver a dehumidifier for Christmas. !!!

This is our collaboration. Colin wanted to take one of my paintings (his current favorite, Moonlight Serenade) and remix it.

Each print measures 12x18 inches, with a white border for framing. It's printed on Kodak Supra Endura professional metallic photographic paper. The metallic paper is GORGEOUS, and actually makes the design look holographic or something. It's super neat. It looks liquid-y. I was really impressed with the quality when they arrived. :o)

I was also impressed with Colin's remixed design. Where does he get these ideas, anyway? Although, it wasn't really all that surprising. I've known he was this talented for years. :o)

Okay, so a number of years ago I had this idea for a large scale art installation called The Rising Sun which required a group of us to actually put it together (what with all the sweet pea picking, dry-ice managing, fabric hanging, carpet taping, music writing, essential-oil dousing, fire hazard making, holiday-forfeiting madness.) It was amazing. We were fortunate that after all that work, at least a thousand people experienced it. There's no possible way I can even begin to explain to you what The Rising Sun was, so you're just going to have to believe me when I say it was awesome. If you were there to experience it, you know what I'm talking about. If you weren't, it's really a shame. Maybe we'll do something like it again one day.

Anyway, my point: One of the blossoming orange trees that existed in "the garden room" of The Rising Sun was adopted by Becky, who watched over it until Colin and I got married, and then ultimately gifted us with it when we moved into our new apartment.

We have tried our darnedest to love the tree, and I think our work must be paying off a bit. The first year we had it, it produced one orange. Last year, it made two. This year, we have 3, count em THREE, beautiful beautiful oranges.

I know, you're impressed. We are quite happy with this achievement ourselves. :o)

(what Colin always says to me when I'm whining endlessly about not knowing how to make a bad painting good.)

There's a quality to painting which I find brave, and partially what drew me to paint in the first place. No erasers. No delete buttons. You just have to go with it, and handle the consequences. I'm sure there's some sort of life lesson there.

When I get stuck on a painting, I have to mess it up in order to continue. Do something drastic. I think this is part of that don't-make-it-good mentality. For some reason, if I sploosh paint all over it, it resets my brain when I'm looking at it. It stops the painting from being whatever I was stuck on and makes it something new.

It takes me days and days and days and days and days and days of staring at the piece to arrive at that, though. I always do, and it always takes that long.

That one is just about done. I have 4 (and a half) others in full swing.

A friend of mine wisely believes in the importance of "speaking things into existence," and that once you speak it out loud, it somehow manifests itself in a way that isn't possible if you don't "make it real" by saying it out loud. It's not that I didn't believe her, because I watched things eerily work out in that exact way for her. I guess I didn't believe it would work for me. (Never-ending personal doubt.)

Yet... there are things that Colin and I made specific effort to speak out loud this year. Certain goals, various plans. Now that it's December, I can't say that those goals aren't clearly happening. Well, starting to happen. Seeming like soon, someday, possibly, maybe they will happen.

But it's there.

We like to come up with "goals" for each period of our lives. Sometimes its a yearly goal, sometimes its a seasonal one (or both, obviously.)

A long, long time ago, we declared one season the Autumn of Art. It was that season that really started the whole life-turn for painting. We also had a Winter of Soup, but I don't think that actually worked out as well.

Without these goals, I think we'd just go on not ever-improving our situation. We'd have the same problems year after year, without much progress. We'd continue to put the problem outside of ourselves (if only this, if only that) and never take pro-active measures to correct them. I think everyone should always be moving forward. I think people around you who refuse to move forward are in danger of holding you back.

Do you ever notice how those "bad days" that inevitably occur happen in a series of days rather than one? Is that just me?

One of the brighter things that happened was when I managed to whack/sprain/bruise my elbow after an impressive kung-fu like stretch maneuver on a nearby chair. Yes, I said brighter. Fortunately, it wasn't my painting arm. Just my mixing-bowl-holding arm.

Tomorrow, I walk.I have a painting to ship.

For now, I'm listening to The Magic of Steel Guitar by Henry Kaleialoha Allen, which I recently acquired from my Grandma, and used to belong to my Grandpa. She told me that they'd had that CD player for over 50 years!

Yay! I was honored to be asked. I always find these interviews beneficial because it forces me to write about what I do, and improve my answers to questions that I often find I don't have answers for. It's very important to be able to communicate about your own art, and I have traditionally been rendered silent when asked. I learn more about why I do what I do myself!

Also, there's a preview of the collaboration that Colin and I have been working on together. ;o) We want to release it this month! (Colin is not only so handsome, but also artistically gifted! :::swoons:::)